https://open.substack.com/pub/aliahd66/p/warfare-how-warfare-is-but-oughtnt?r=i1fws&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Warfare: How warfare is but oughtn't to be 

Warfare purports to be a true story of Navy Seals out on a joint operation in Ramadi, Iraq, sometime in late 2006. The scene of the tactical level action is in what’s known as the Sunni Triangle, Ramadi being one of three vertices a triangle formed by Baghdad and Saddam’s hometown, Tikrit.

Having disposed off Saddam Hussein in 2004, the Americans went on to hubristically dissolve the Iraqi army and the Baath party. The Sunni Arabs thus were left without their power base. They rebelled. Their area became rather inhospitable for the American military.

The movie shows a squad of the Seals occupying a house as stake out along with another squad alternatively engaged nearby. The Seals’ location is compromised; a grenade lobbed; and they suffer a minor casualty.

As they go about evacuating the casualty, they are targeted with bomb, resulting in two of their Iraqi translators being killed. Along with another trooper severely injured, the one who was injured originally is also badly mauled.

The rest of the movie is how the two squads evacuate their two wounded comrades. Even as they vector two Bradleys over to take the casualties away, they come under attack from a constricting dragnet of Iraqi rebels. The movie’s climax is in their staving off the Iraqis as they jump into a couple of Bradleys and make it out of the killing ground, unscathed.

The movie is based on a retelling of the episode by those who participated in the operation, including the director. The set recreates the scene of the operation and the actors replicate the experience of the soldier participants.

The movie is yet another one of the Hollywood’s war genre in the tradition of Thin Red Line of an infantry company participating in MacArthur’s island-hopping strategy; Platoon, that talks of cohesion in the combat against the Vietcong; and The Hurt Locker that showed the heroics of a bomb disposal squad against nefarious jihadists.

It is aptly titled, Warfare, in showing up the brutality in war, or, to phrase it better, brutality of war.

And, perhaps more significantly, the futility of war, with the last scene showing the Americans depart the site, while the Iraqi rebels trickle out of the surrounding houses with the lane back in their hands.

Panning outwards, such denouement is quite like the scenario today: with Americans abandoning their Forever Wars, their victim societies are resuming life in a space – geographic and social - messed up by the Americans.

The film does not suggest any of this, of course. Hollywood films are by Americans, for American and of Americans. Iraqis in the film are shown as conspiratorial figures to be shot at.

This is clear from the only ones getting killed in the operation are the Iraqi translators. Their getting in the way of the explosion is shown as to owing to a miscommunication. That’s far too pat.

It’s not impossible the translators were (ab)used as human shields, even if the movie seeks to paper over their deaths as stemming from orders lost in translation.

In any case, to use the translators for any other purpose than facilitate their interaction with Iraqi public is itself questionable. True, they carry weapons but that is for protective self-defence.

In any case, there is no way that Iraqis – remember their army was put to pasture - could have fit into operations conducted by the specialists as are Seals. At that early stage for untrained Iraqis to be given tactical chores raises suspicion on why exactly did they die, with the film trying rather hard to make a case that their deaths were an accident.

We know how Americans treat those who fight alongside from the manner their former allies fell off aircrafts they were clinging on to as the Americans exited Kabul.

At that juncture there was no love lost between the Americans and Iraqis of any hue. Within months of the self-centered American occupation beginning with the live streaming of Saddam’s statue biting the dust, the insurgency caught steam.

It was not terrorism then. Standing up to occupying forces is a duty. Fighting when denied self-determination is a human right. Remember the Americans invaded Iraq under a false pretext and without Security Council authorisation.

Saddam’s war plan to dissolve the conventional opposition into an insurgency was well in stride, for which caches of arms had been stacked away. Given the manner the American occupation unfolded, the Iraqis were in any case left with no choice.

Rumsfeld’s ‘light footprint’ for regime-change predictably went awry. Such disregard of strategic common sense could only have risen in the racist worldview of neo-cons out to reset the Arab world.

However, Americans got wiser. Even as the insurgency raged, they put their best doctrinal minds at work to come up with a counter insurgency doctrine. This was then put into practice by the head of the team, General Petraeus, being given a command billet in Iraq.

The freshly-minted doctrine emphasized usual counter insurgency principles, well known to armies elsewhere, as the Indian army.

At the time, the Indian army also wrote up its first counter insurgency doctrine, though it had then been countering insurgency all through the preceding half-a-century. Incidentally, there was an unseemly race between the two to release the doctrinal product ahead of the other.

In the event, it can be said the Americans borrowed from Indian experience in low intensity conflict operations, even if it is unclear if it made any difference to their showing in the long run.

Bush Jr., in his final duck year, sacked Rumsfeld and authorized the first - of many later in Iraq and Afghanistan - surge. Playing divide-and-rule with tribalism in the Sunni Triangle in what’s called the ‘Anbar Awakening’, allowed the Americans to restore a semblance of stability. Self-congratulations were premature since soon enough the Islamic State first took root there.

It’s clear that the situation the Seals were up against wasn’t entirely of faulty politics, but also of the dismissive, if not contemptuous, attitudes towards the adversary with which Americans wage wars.

In the period, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, the manner the Americans intruded into houses is not quite as shown in the film. They were liable to beat down doors and invade privacy of families, a practice that had to be stopped by the force of orders in Afghanistan.

Admittedly, in the film, they are shown as setting up a surveillance point, which of necessity required them sneaking in and hold up the family indoors. That the two families occupying the house get to leave only in the very last scene shows that they could well have been held as hostages.

That women and children were held through the firefight shows as much. They could instead have been released, making their way out either in a pause or with a warning given to the surrounding rebels to temporarily hold off.

The setting up of surveillance points is itself a tactic borrowed from the Israelis, who have been using the method to keep tabs on West Bank. Such borrowing from Israelis should ring a bell that mimesis comes at a cost – a lesson Indians could use too.

Not only does the squad vandalise the house, but merrily calls for fire-support from the main gun of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Fearing rebels have managed a purchase on a portion of the terrace, they shoot up the upper floor. While at it, for good measure, the Bradleys spatter the neighbourhood.

Keeping Americans safe is indeed expensive both in treasure and lives.

In fact, force protection needs reached such levels that when General MacChrystal in Afghanistan tried to rein in trigger-happy Rambos, there was a backlash from the grunts, loosening up the rules of engagement once again.

At the time, YouTube videos of American GIs shooting up the countryside when provoked by itinerant Taliban were almost comical. They no doubt terrorized cattle grazing on the opposite slopes.

In the film, the amount of ammo poofed-off sets up a spectacle. What misses the camera is that it is a lived-in locality, with families surely covering in panic. There is also a market close at hand, which shows it’s a heavily populated area.

Into such an area, there is no call to fire off two claymore mines, as the Seals do to deter the rebels and clear the way for the Bradley in its first casualty-collection foray. There is also no call to thrice over call for ‘show of force’ sweeps by fighter jets on air cover patrol.

The havoc that the supersonic booms wreck on the ground when the aircraft is at tree-top level is shown very realistically. Considering what American air power, and that of its allies as Israel, has done elsewhere, as in Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia, this was almost humane.

The film does not show what air power had been actually used for just prior, with nearby Fallujah reduced to rubble. Later, Mosul was likewise clobbered over some 11 months, at the cost of – hold your breath - 11 American lives. With drones now also in action, Gaza shows persistence of such means can only lead to atrocity crimes.

Despite the violence – with GI Joe in all sorts of macho poses firing off salvo after salvo –not a single bullet-inflicted injury is sustained by any soldier. Even the other squad, in the open when converging on the besieged position, got away scot-free, though much ordnance is supposed to be flying around.

Unlike in Indian films where villains are sent flying – only one Iraqi rebel sustains a bullet injury. But as everyone knows, what goes up, comes down. And so must bullets someplace as far away as a few kilometers.

Clearly, the firefight was not of the order meriting the din. This only means the squad in a funk dispensed with fire discipline. As loud as their fireworks is that this squad violated most tenets of international humanitarian law.

The film begins with a music video picturized on women at an aerobics class – suggestive pelvic thrusts in scanty attire. The troops setting out are viewing it to warm up at the end of their final brief. The camaraderie is all very macho.

This brings up a wider question: What ‘basic needs’ were Americans fulfilling in their Forever Wars? Were white American males – there were perhaps three non-white men of some 20 men and, very surprisingly, no black men - devastating societies elsewhere because they were unable to measure up to the sexuality of their womenfolk, unleashed by their quest for equality?

Narrowly, the question arises: Can such troops be relied on to hold women and children hostage? And, what of the male gaze? Cannot Afghans choose to ward it off with burkhas?

After Gaza, the lecturing that the West has subject the rest of humanity is no longer credible. However instead of throwing out the baby out with the bathwater they need to be held to the self-same liberal standards they claim universality of.

The ownership of these standards must now go universal. The West’s claim of custodianship – now comprehensively lapsed – must not be allowed to put these standards, rules and laws under cloud.

As to whether the film is pro- or anti-war, I’ll leave to viewers. The blood and gore of the two Americans can hardly wash off memory of figures of Iraqi dead, including six hundred thousand children from the preceding sanctions.

Certain is that the intent of drawing sympathy for the American fighting man stands nullified.

 https://aliahd66.substack.com/p/who-murdered-international-order?utm_source=twitter&s=w

Who murdered International Order?

Or Mystery of the Missing Body

International Order allegedly died at Bucha. It had been tottering over since the day Putin plunged a knife into Ukraine, but to the cognoscenti that knife was one borrowed from the Americans. The blood from their using the knife in Muslim lands had barely dried, when they lent it to Putin. Even as they were drawing blood with that very same knife in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, they set up an ambush using Ukraine as bait. Enticed, Russia took over the knife from the West and set upon Ukraine. So, for sure, we have two murderers: Russia and America. 

But, as commentators remind, both have supporters with bloody hands. While the Americans cobbled up coalitions made of up the West when they went about visibly digging the grave of International Order, the Russians have China holding their back. To the extent the West participated in twisting the knife, it is party to murder. Rumour has it that Putin got a tacit nod from China for sticking the knife into Ukraine when he went over for the winter Olympics. Though China has spooked its neighbours, it is at best accomplice to the crime, not having physically stuck a knife into International Order. Spectators are aplenty, those who might have played a part in staying the slaying. Instead, they either sat on the fence or swayed to one side. In not collectively stopping the murder, together they prospectively make the fourth murderer. 

International Order was killed since it prevented deeds the murderers wished to go about with, without feeling embarrassed about it. International Order valued sovereignty and non-interference, which the West could not see bandied by the countries of the Middle East. It backed status quo in the region based on pro-American authoritarian regimes for the sake of its local friend, Israel. This put out some locals, who ganged up and flew some planes into American buildings, killing many. 

Claiming this to be the first nail into the coffin of International Order, the Americans took the knife to Afghanistan to take out the Arab group that challenged the chaperon of International Order was hiding out. Tasting blood, they then went about reshaping Middle East in their own image, beginning with taking their feud with Saddam to the logical conclusion. They claimed Saddam first challenged International Order by an armed attack on his neighbour, Kuwait, though his armed attack on another neighbour, Iran, earlier had elicited not such complaint. Removing Gaddafi followed and then they overstretched by going after Bashar. The Iranian bomb-in-the-basement kept their knife at bay both from Bashar and Iran itself. 

The Russians – ruing loss in stature as a global power - saw their opportunity to get back at the Americans not only for Americans ambushing them in Afghanistan, but also for what followed: hara-kiri of the Soviet Union. Espying the Russians seeing an opportunity to do them down, the Americans, on their part, tied Russians down with colour revolutions. The Russians put up a fight in Georgia, pulling a Kosovo on the Americans. 

The Americans hit back, setting up Ukraine for an ambush of the Russians. With their Ukrainian client unsaddled by the Americans at the Maidan, the Russians went into Syria to steady Bashar - who the Americans wanted to unseat. Backed by China – that wanted to join the United States as superpower - the Russians punched above their weight. Putin wanted to replay the Soviet past he was loath to see disappear when as its intelligence official he saw it wither and die. 

The Russians were gratified to see the Americans wanting to leave Afghanistan. Taliban, receiving a lifeline through Pakistan, with Iran, Russia and China in the background, outlasted the Americans. The ignominy required Americans to get back at their antagonists. Against Russia, Ukraine provided an enticing killing ground. 

Having spotted an ambush site there in Russian occupation partially of Donbas and incorporation of Crimea into Russia when Yanukovich was displaced, they set about ensnaring Putin. Keeping up a din that he was about to attack, they handed him the knife they’d been wielding elsewhere. Enticed into using it, he stuck it into Ukraine, nailing instead International Order’s other vestment – preserving political independence and territorial integrity from armed attack.  

Pumping in easy-to-use, hand-held armaments for the Ukrainian army and a host of white-supremacist volunteers, the West stopped Putin from twisting the knife. Though Ukraine twists and turns in agony, it valiantly tries to snatch the knife and turn it on Russia. This keeps the two from talking peace, as each tries to bleed the other. The Americans, keeping the Ukrainians on life support and promising rehab, are waiting for Russia to implode. Unbeknownst is that their main adversary, China, is instead in their sights. A weakened Russia helps isolate China. Two birds with one stone, Ukrainians paying a price. 

And Bucha happened. Genocide made its appearance. It’s a vulture that alights when convenient, like in Darfur, but not in Iraq between the wars when 600000 children died from US sanctions. Knife wounds in Ukraine include humanitarian protection and human rights. Somalia, Yemen, Gaza, West Bank, Syria and Afghanistan did not elicit the expulsion of the perpetrator from the Human Rights Council. Libya was ousted the last time, but not the West for what they proceeded to do in Libya thereafter and for eddies across the Sahel. Neither did wars of aggression trigger off the International Court of Justice. The International Criminal Court stepped up even as the war started, and has begun investigations – happily breaking the jinx that its domain is only Africa. Certain is its proactivism cannot and will not include Israel and the West, least of all the US. That its domain does not yet include the crime of aggression is so convenient. 

Allegedly, International Order lies dead. There is the United Nations Charter in which is written up International Order. The Charter-era world order was instead first made up by the Cold War. The two sides did pretty much as they pleased, with the areas not part of the two sides serving as vent for to keep their warring cold. Once one of the two sides tired and died, the other touted International Order, even as it set about putting nails into its coffin. Resurrecting, Russia joined in nailing International Order. Rising China used International Order, without putting a check on either the West or Russia. Now it’s seeing Russia put the final nail into International Order, so that it can manufacture an International Order all its own when Russia has taken down America. The UN is missing-in-action, merely another forum in which to beat the other side. International Order turned out merely mistress of balance of power. No body found, there was no murder; only murderers left. 

Can Pakistan Turn the US Twist of Its Tail Into an Opportunity?

http://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/NewsDetail/index/1/11919/Can-Pakistan-Turn-the-US-Twist-of-Its-Tail-Into-an-Opportunity

While US President Donald Trump’s Afghanistan speech in August laying out his Afghanistan policy was rather vague on details, his defence secretary, ‘Mad dog’ Mattis has busied himself lately with fleshing it out.

The major part of it is in threats described by James Mattis to the House Armed Services Committee as ‘enormously powerful number of options’ to Pakistan. Helpfully, he pointed to a couple of these being ‘diplomatic isolation’ and loss of major non-NATO ally status. As incentive, he offered a opening up of the regional economic links, to include those with India.

But his report that Trump is ‘prepared to take whatever steps necessary’ calls for being wary, especially since he ominously indicates the Americans were holding out to give Pakistan ‘one more time’.

President Trump’s Afghanistan policy speech, delivered at a military base near the Arlington National Cemetery, had it that ‘attack we will’ in a ‘fight to win’ over the ‘losers’. If the American foot-work over North Korea has any pointers, Trump’s speech can be taken as much noise, while his ministers go about setting up a diplomatic bypass.

(In the North Korea case, while Trump in his General Assembly address threatened to ‘totally destroy’ the country, his foreign secretary let on that the Americans were talking directly with representatives of Trump’s ‘rocket man’.) Apparently, both Mattis and Tillerson are to visit Pakistan in quick succession soon, perhaps conveying the possibilities ahead, with Tillerson holding out the carrot and Mattis the stick.

The last time the Americans went the whole hog with the stick was at the outset of Operation Enduring Freedom, threatening to bomb Pakistan back into the stone-age. Wisely Musharraf, demonstrated a bit of military decision making panache in his smart about-turn, promptly pulling the carpet from under the Taliban. Even as the Taliban regime collapsed, Musharraf was quick to play the double game, offering the Taliban sanctuary as they escaped – along with Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora - into Pakistan.

This time round, the Pakistanis have been blowing hot and cold. Its national assembly called Trump’s speech ‘hostile and threatening’. It was a useful reminder to the US that its supply lines are through Pakistan. But even as Mattis spoke, the Pakistani foreign minister Khawaja Asif was in Washington DC, staving off any hard options in the Pentagon’s cupboard.

It is easy to reckon that – Trump notwithstanding - the US does not have very many hard options.

While Trump was clear that he would not repeat Obama’s ‘mistake’ in Iraq by leaving Afghanistan, boots on ground in Pakistan are not an option for the US. Its numbers in Afghanistan are set to increase by only about 4000. Its NATO allies are unlikely to cough up any more than they already have, including the American ‘poodle’, the UK, currently seized with Brexit. With these numbers, the US cannot take the war across the Durand Line. They already have the capability for another Operation Neptune Spear, a target-specific raid across the border. The Warrior Monk - Mattis’ other moniker - was then the commander of the US Central Command, overseeing its Afghan war. He therefore should know that this cannot help them much with clearing up the sanctuary Americans believe terrorists enjoy in Pakistan.

While expansion of the program of targeting the Taliban and the Haqqani network with drone attacks has been bandied as an option, the Pakistani Prime Minister at an event at the Council of Foreign Relations during his recent trip to New York for the UN General Assembly session, implied that the use of drones was disrespectful of Pakistani sovereignty. It increases extremist tendencies in Pakistan, adding to numbers of those radicalized. Collateral damage from drones being one of the main grievances impelling people from the frontier areas to head off for the conflict, an increase in drone strikes could only contribute to increasing Taliban popularity and gains in Afghanistan.

There are also other – worse – players, such as ISIS affiliates. It is not unlikely that the ISIS, with nowhere to go from its drubbing - now being wrapped up - in Iraq and Syria, could head for Afghanistan as the next site to ambush the US. The US, in degrading the Taliban, would be whittling a force that can best take on the ISIS. ISIS presence in Afghanistan is not at the expense of the Taliban. Just as the Iraqi military, the Afghan security forces – though also trained in Indian military institutions - are unlikely to do any better against the ISIS, especially if reinforced by fighters from conflicts in the Middle East.

Nevertheless, the ISIS bogey needs exposing. Though Pakistan can be credibly accused of many slippages in the war against terror, it would hardly be coy in case the ISIS comes visiting. The potential threat is being used as alibi to extend the American stay in the region, for strategic reasons other than to do with Afghanistan or, indeed, terrorism. Even a cursory look at the map shows up three American-skeptic countries – Iran, Russia and China – in the neighbourhood.

The US strategy appears to rely for its success on strengthening the Afghan national security forces. However, this has been the principal line of US military effort at least since Obama took office. The idea of the ‘surge’ in Afghanistan, that took US numbers into six figures, was to strengthen the Afghan forces, even as the additional US forces broke the back of the Taliban insurgency. As is well known, the Taliban waited out the surge and today control 40 per cent of Afghan territory.

Thus, it is unclear as to what is different this time round in the US strategy. Is Mattis wanting to play as defence secretary a hand he was unable to play as the military commander in theater then? Perhaps it is posturing on part of the US, hoping to pressure Pakistan to deliver the Taliban to the table. Obama had faltered in this by killing Mullah Mansour, the Taliban chief, in a targeted drone attack. The Americans by now know that the ticket out of their longest war can only be issued by the Taliban.

The Americans hope that by twisting Pakistan’s tail, it would force the Pakistanis to ‘go after’ the Taliban, pushing the Taliban to the table. For that, all Mattis appears to have is a set of sanctions up his sleeve. In his words, "There are a number of lines of effort being put together now in Secretary of Treasury's office, Secretary of State's office, my own office, the intel agencies. We are also working with Secretary General Stoltenberg to ensure that NATO's equities are brought to bear." Since China will bail out Pakistan, a Pakistani revision of their list of ‘bad Taliban’ is hardly likely.

Mattis’ betrayed his weak hand in saying that being considerate with Pakistan had led to his declining to consider Indian boots on the ground in Afghanistan. In his trip to India last month, India’s new defence minister categorically ruled out the possibility. However, that Mattis has included a possible opening up of economic ties in his strategy suggests an Indian input during his visit. He has apparently been led to believe that India would do so, but India’s expectation is that Pakistan will perhaps be goaded into taking on the Taliban on its soil. This is disingenuous on India’s part.

The upshot is that the US does not have the options it claims. Pakistan does not then have to reflexively push back. The best way to prevent radicalism is to deprive it of a context filled with violence and contestation. Pakistan can use the opportunity of the ‘one more time’ on offer by the US for shepherding the Taliban to respectability, duly incentivized for good behavior. It can thereby gain a say in the indefinitely into the future of Afghanistan; set at rest the fears of all its neighbours; and inveigle its way back into US good books by enabling the Americans to depart in keeping with Trump’s original instinct.

The Exit from ‘AfPak’: Don’t Blame Pakistan

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/06/27/the-exit-from-afpak-dont-blame-pakistan/

by Ali Ahmed

June 27, 2012

New Delhi — At its Chicago summit, NATO read out what has been the writing on the wall all through Obama’s first term. It is that its departure from Afghanistan is inevitable, with the addition being that it is now imminent. That this has not unfolded according to script is cause for some hand wringing among commentators. Ashley Tellis, Christine Fair and Robert Kaplan have in quick succession sought to point to Pakistan as spoilsport, with the former dwelling on Pakistan’s impending strategic defeat. Will his hope materialize?

All through the war in its vicinity, Pakistan has been scalded, but has avoided being burnt. The much reviled Musharraf took a wise decision by siding with the west. In retrospect, it seems as though it was the only choice he had. The blame for the west’s inability to push through its agenda of peace-building has been laid at Pakistan’s door. Its provision of sanctuary to the Taliban is taken as a willful challenge. Yet again Pakistan may have had little choice in this since it would have been unable in any case to wrap up the Taliban and their Pakistani affiliates. If the west could not succeed despite the ‘surge’, it is too much to expect of the Pakistan army to have had a better showing. From these two strategic choices made by the Pakistan army, based on a clear understanding of its limitations, it is clear that Pakistan can be credited with doing at least some things right.

So where does the responsibility lie? It is with Obama’s inability to convert the military surge into political gain. The surge was meant to represent the stick as part of a carrot and stick policy. It was to be supplemented by Pakistani army actions on its side of the Durand line, thereby choking the Taliban. In the event, the Taliban by forging a joint front with its ethnic fellows in Pakistan and Punjabi extremists, has been able to confront Pakistan with a dilemma: the more close it got to finishing the Taliban off in keeping with the desires of the west, the less stable it would get. The terror bombings in the later part of the last decade suggest as much. Pakistan, valuing its own survival above any doles the west could spare for its efforts, chose strategic prudence. Its holding out for an apology over the killings of 24 of its soldiers by U.S. forces at best provides a cover.

The gratuitous advice it has been at the receiving end of assumes that it could have gone the distance in taking on the Taliban. The west had got India on board to wind down tensions over time, after the spike in wake of the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India. This was to enable Pakistan to transfer its attention to the western front. Could the Pakistan army have succeeded as per western expectations?

Firstly, the terrain is forbidding. It has been seen in Kashmir where the going is easier and the foe is less formidable, that it takes considerable troop strength. Pakistan does not have those levels of troops, even if it could spare them entirely from the eastern border. Secondly, the tentacles that the Taliban has acquired due to anti-Americanism in Pakistan and religious extremism enable it to expand the arc of instability at will to include Lahore and Karachi. This would have stretched Pakistan’s suppressive capabilities to the extent of challenging their institutional integrity by internal ethnic and ideological fissures. If the Pakistan army cracked, then Pakistan could have gone under, there being no forces of equivalent strength in polity. This would have been to the advantage of extremists. That the Pakistan army judged the possible outcome and refrained from provoking it, is to its credit.

The expectation that Pakistan not playing ball has led to dissipation of the promise of the surge is therefore not a fair one. If Pakistan could arrive at a conclusion that it could at best be supportive and not hyperactive, the possibility should not have escaped Pentagon planners. To compensate they really should have weighed the carrot part of the strategy appropriately. This means that the peace process needed to have been an equally significant prong of strategy. It was instead geared to create fissures in the Taliban between the ‘good’ and irreconcilable Taliban. It was outsourced to the Karzai regime, with its notable legitimacy deficit as far as the intended interlocutors, the Taliban, were concerned. Their attitude was evident from the efforts of Karzai’s pointsman, Burhanuddin Rabbani, being rewarded with assassination. Only later, did U.S. special envoy Marc Grossman, the successor to Richard Holbrooke, get into the act; a case of too little too late. While it cannot be said for certain that the Taliban would have proved responsive, persistence with the military option, in the tradition of the actions post 9/11, foreclosed any possibility of finding out.

The US was either a victim of its own hubris or strategically ineffective due to its internal politics and institutional fights. Obama, having wound down the Iraq war, perhaps needed an arena to prove he was tough. The bureaucratic tussle, set off by the reaction to 9/11, between Foggy Bottom, Langley and Pentagon, played out in dysfunctional policies towards ‘AfPak’. The responsibility for a suboptimal outcome can hardly be laid at Pakistan’s door, even if, in election year, Obama needs a fall guy.

Highlighting this is important, since the refrain in the commentaries cited and extant largely is that Pakistan has stabbed the west in the back, despite receiving $ 20 billion as incentive. A consensus over the consequence for such double dealing is being built up in terms of pushing Pakistan over the brink, the euphemisms used being ‘containing’, ‘isolating’ etc. Pakistan needs being wary of an embarrassed superpower.  It can safely be predicted that the ability of the army to hold steady despite internal political disarray, demonstrated in weathering a decade long storm along both its external and internal axes, will now be sorely tested.

OPINION

A Plan For Bonn

Domestic distractions should not come in way of the historic opportunity India has for turning the region around. It is time for India to take the onus for peacekeeping in the region and play to its weight.

ALI AHMED

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?279202

Quite like 10 years ago, India has again gone empty-handed to Bonn with nothing for either of its friends, Afghanistan or the US. This is not unreasonable since it has limited leverage. However, is this good enough for a country that regards itself as a regional power?

It is being argued by some that there is little reason for India to take the lead. Pakistan is protesting the US attack on the border outpost along the Durand line by staying away from Bonn. It has broken off its initiative to get the Taliban to talk. The cracks in its relationship with the US are showing up. India can therefore coast along, goes the argument.
This is questionable. It places a premium on the US plan for the region working out. The plan is a draw down of Western troops over the next three years. With simultaneous bolstering of Afghan security forces along with whittling of the the Taliban, this is thought possible. At the optimistic best, this implies continuing instability to show for over a decade of military action in the region.

There are worse possibilities. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are unlikely to get their act together in time. Even the Indian army with a proven track record in fighting insurgency had found it difficult to train the Rashtriya Rifles as a counter insurgency force. To assume that the ANSF can pull it off, even with Indian help, is a trifle optimistic.
The Taliban may not prove a push over. In case greater pressure is applied on Pakistan to ‘go after’ it, it could heighten the backlash Pakistan faces with a little help from the Tehrik- e- Taliban Pakistan. The latest attack that has left 24 Pakistani soldiers dead can only harden Kayani’s resolve not to risk civil war.

It is evident that the US, itself facing a second recession in five years, wants a face-saving way out. Its European allies are exhausted. It is unwilling to pay the price of a climb down in terms of a super power sitting across the table with a non-state actor, the Taliban. It can neither continue the war indefinitely, nor bring it to a close. It needs help.

It is here that India can step in. It has kept up a low profile developmental contribution so far. Doing so has helped keep Pakistani paranoia under control. But with US intentions unlikely to work, worse outcomes loom. India needs to be more than a constructive bystander.

The Taliban having proven resilient implies that it is a strategic actor. India must establish links with it and ascertain if it is amenable to moderation. The Eid statement from Mullah Omar, that has strangely not found much traction in strategic commentary, can serve as a take-off point for reconciliation. A negotiated end to the fighting is a potential future. The sweetener on offer could be international commitment to reconstruction in return for a reformed Taliban.

At a minimum, India can assure Pakistan that it would not prove obstructionist in case Pakistan is able to deliver a moderated Taliban to the table. India must play its role as a ‘strategic partner’, prevailing on the US to also take a seat, along with Karzai if necessary.

India can take the idea further. The pre-negotiations stage of conflict resolution, leading up to a ceasefire would, to begin with, require insertion of blue berets or UN monitors. Subsequent negotiations towards a comprehensive peace agreement would require inter-positioning of ‘blue helmets’ — UN peacekeepers — for ‘robust’ peacekeeping. Finally, implementing the accord would require Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration (DDR) under UN supervision.

UN is over-extended with commitments in Africa. It would find it difficult to undertake expansion of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). It is here that India can make an abiding difference.
Along with Pakistan, it can offer a SAARC peacekeeping force in a UN-SAARC ‘hybrid’ peacekeeping mission. With the other two South Asian states among the top 5 UN troop contributing countries —Nepal and Bangladesh—alongside, Afghanistan can be painted blue. Troops from Turkey and other Muslim states can join in transforming the UN mandate from peace enforcement to peacekeeping.

Naysayers would have us believe that trust levels do not exist between India and Pakistan to take up anything jointly. The SAARC does not have institutional capacity. If the US has been unable to tame the Taliban, how can ‘blue helmets’ ever hope to? The gainers being Pakistan and the Taliban, the strategy sounds like appeasement.

All of this misses the point that the Taliban could perhaps be brought around. Militarily this is only possible at the unacceptable risk of destabilising Pakistan. The way out is political resolution. Both the US and the Taliban need to come round simultaneously, so that neither appears to be giving up. With Pakistan working on the Taliban and India on their mutual partner, the US, this is not impossible.

What is there for India in all this?
Acting as midwife for peace in the region, India takes centre- stage, playing up to its weight. Pakistan can be persuaded to let up on Kashmir in return. India’s economic engagement in Afghanistan is of such an order that it will continue to have influence, even with Taliban accommodated in the power structure.

India’s domestic distractions should not come in way of the historic opportunity it has for turning the region around. It should have offered this win-win plan at Bonn.

IDSA COMMENT

Obama’s AfPak Review should emphasise on Peace Talks with the Taliban

http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ObamasAfPakReviewshouldemphasiseonPeaceTalkswiththeTaliban_aliahmed_231110

Ali Ahmed

November 23, 2010

Obama’s review of the AfPak policy is due this December. He would like to stick to his schedule, outlined at West Point last December, of having the departure from Afghanistan ‘begin’ in July 2011. By no means had he implied then that it would be anything but a measured departure, the commentary of critics of a US ‘exit’ notwithstanding. It is hoped that with an ANA trained to levels of military credibility, NATO would be able to draw down and hand over the responsibility by 2014, as required by Karzai and as stands decided at the NATO Lisbon summit. Even as the surge reaches culmination point, this can only be made possible through a more hands-on approach to the peace overtures to the Taliban currently underway.

Reports of a peace track have been around for over two years now. Earlier, the Saudis had figured as peace brokers. The scene shifted to UN peace initiatives under Kai Eide, but was aborted by the arrest by Pakistanis of their Taliban interlocutor, Mullah Baradar. This summer the peace jirga approved the overtures by President Karzai currently underway. Tacit support of the US for the process is evident from logistic support and safe passage being given to enable presence of the insurgent representatives. The Pakistanis have also chipped in by arranging access of the Haqqani faction to Kabul. A heartening report is of Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami willing to end the bloodletting for a price.

Peace deals in the offing testify partially to success of the ‘surge’. The idea behind the increase of about 30,000 troops over the past two years has been to militarily pressure the Taliban. Fissures within the Taliban in terms of differing motivations, varying intensity in ties with the core Taliban, and distance from al Qaeda were to be exploited to whittle it down. The Taliban are over 30,000 strong. No fissures have shown up among them so far that could be usefully exploited. How to bring the Mullah Omar Taliban round remains the key question.

The Taliban has expectedly vowed to ensure that the exit would be sooner than 2014 and an unceremonious one at that. Getting at them militarily has proven difficult, sitting as they are on the Pakistani side of ‘AfPak’. This year the Pakistan military had the floods bail them out from taking action against these sanctuaries. The threat of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, an ally of Taliban comprising both Punjabis and Pushtuns, expanding the war into Pakistani cities stays the Pakistani hand. In any case, the military are ‘hedging’, in order to have some say in the post NATO dispensation in Kabul using their good offices with the Taliban if accommodated in power in an exit deal with the US.

The fact that the Taliban has cannon-fodder available in the Pakistani hinterland and amongst Pushtuns radicalized by war indicates that attrition would have to continue over a considerable period. This would likely be at the price of rising distaste with the increasingly unpopular war in the US. The exhaustion of the Europeans is already self-evident. Therefore, eliminating the Taliban does not appear feasible. This leave the US with two options: continuing down the military route or privileging direct peace talks.

The military prong, having shifted under McChrystal to a classical counter insurgency, is not designed to produce quick results. The ANA is being trained to par to bring these about over a period of perhaps three to five years. The US is to scale back its operations and presence progressively as it outsources military operations to the ANA. The ‘Afghan on Afghan’ strategy smacks of ‘divide and rule’. As a strategy, while it enables a US-NATO ‘exit’, it is of no benefit for the region to have instability continue, exploited by neighbours by proxy. In any case, the US would continue being militarily engaged, even if increasingly in a support role. This is hardly an outcome worth the material investment made over the past decade and the cost in lives, particularly of non-combatants.

Obama’s accession, his ‘deadline’ of July 2011, cessation of operations in Iraq, and economy-centred introspection in the US, have all made anti-war sentiment recede. However, the war is already the longest war the US has engaged in. It has exacted 4000 casualties. Continuing Afghan deaths, whether of civilians as ‘collateral damage’ or of insurgents, would ultimately also come under question. Release of the Wikileaks trove, questioning the figures on Iraqi dead, indicates the potentiality of US public opinion turning against the war. The Obama review would take a political view, sensitive to the presidential elections due in 2012.

Continuing operations, particularly beyond the ‘culmination point’, would only increase radicalism, especially if Pakistan were to be destabilized further. The al Qaeda, reportedly reduced to 500 to 600 fighters, can be defeated by a strategy relying on covert operations or through drone attacks, rather than military operations. Whether a campaign has reached the culmination point is the critical strategic judgment. The December review provides the US-NATO combine the opportunity. A decision in favour of military predominant operations would reinforce failure. It is evident then that there needs to be a shift in strategy.

The judgment would be essentially predicated on potential of the ‘peace talks’ prong of strategy. This would be considerably enhanced with the US taking hands-on control of the peace process. Presently, it is only supportive of it. The talks are Afghan-led, but the Karzai regime’s credibility slows down the peace process. In any case, the final outcome would require the US to come on board. The US should instead pre-position itself on one side of the table. This would make the desultory process acquire content and urgency. Alternatives to military action would emerge once the superpower’s intellectual, intelligence, material and diplomatic resources stand unambiguously committed to a negotiated outcome.

The desired outcome needs working through along several parameters. It must preserve the results of the Bonn process. It should pre-empt civil war and reprisals. It should keep the US and its material resources engaged. It needs to get regional players on board. This can be done if their respective, sometimes contradictory, interests are protected. It requires the Taliban to moderate its ideological stance and cut off links with the al Qaeda. The European drawdown would have to be stage-managed. Only ‘win-win’ thinking can have each of the players taking something away from the table.

Obama’s appointment of an interlocutor to the peace talks would energise this prong of strategy. Honour placated, the Taliban would participate. A promise of moderation can be extracted, with the Saudis and Pakistanis as guarantors. It would set the stage for a ceasefire. Reintegration of the Taliban could follow. Graduated ending of Western military presence can be predicated on the Taliban’s good behaviour and operations against the al Qaeda. Eventually, an extended economic and reconstruction engagement could remain in place under UN auspices, with all regional players engaged.

War provides the context for radicalization and the threat that this creates. Ending the war would remove the conditions and context of radicalization. Such a tall order requires Obama to take charge. Obama has already received the Nobel Peace Prize for his intentions on the nuclear front. He could yet deserve it in case of peace initiatives in AfPak.